Weekly Spots

POSTED: June 27, 2011

(White Plains, NY) June 27, 2011 – According to Arbitron, Seattle is the 13th largest radio market with a population of 3,453,400.

• Seattle is the most populous city in the state of Washington and a major seaport located on an isthmus between Puget Sound, an arm of the Pacific Ocean, and Lake Washington. Seattle is 96 miles south of Canada.

• Despite being on the margin of the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, the city has a reputation for frequent rain. This reputation derives from this frequency of precipitation as well as the fact that it is cloudy an average of 226 days per year (compared to 132 in New York City). Nonetheless, the city receives less annual precipitation than New York City.

• Seattle is the home to many major companies such as: Amazon.com, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Costco Wholesale Corp., Microsoft and Nintendo.

• Of those over the age of 25, more than 50% hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and 93 percent (vs. 80 percent nationally) have a high school diploma or equivalent.

• Universities near Seattle include: Seattle University, Seattle Central Community College, Washington State University-West, University of Washington, Cornish College of the Arts, Golden Gate University, and The Art Institute of Seattle.

• Some people from Seattle: Bill Gates - founder of Microsoft, Kurt Cobain – late leader of NIRVANA, Jimi Hendrix – rock legend, and bands: Foo Fighters, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, just to name a few. Seattle is credited with creating the whole Grunge movement in music.

SEATTLE SPOT TEN

In Seattle last week the #1 radio advertiser was GEICO with 1,016 ads. THE HOME DEPOT was #2 with 890 spots, while SAFELITE AUTOGLASS was #3 running 672 spots. VERIZON was #4 with 584 commercials and SLEEP COUNTRY USA aired 561 spots to make them #5. CHASE was #6 with 518 spots, while HTC jumped from #35 to #7 with 514 spots. FRED MEYER dropped from #1 to #8 with 510 spots and SHANE COMPANY took #9 airing 485 announcements. O’REILLY-CSK-MURRAY’S was #10 with 461 spots.

INSURANCE PROVIDERS SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

Everyone needs insurance and the ads just keep on coming. GEICO was #1 with 43,133 spots. PROGRESSIVE is getting aggressive at #2 with 15,509 and ALLSTATE was #3 airing 6,337 announcements. FARMERS dug in at #4 with 6,000 spots, while MATRIX DIRECT held #5 with their 3,622 ads. AMERICAN FAMILY INSURANCE was #6 running 3,441 spots and SELECTQUOTE INSURANCE came in #7 with 3,329 spots. STATE FARM was #8 with 3,219 spots, while SAFEAUTO INSURANCE COMPANY was #9 with 2,221 ads. Coming in #10 was the duck AFLAC with 1,821 spots.

NATIONAL SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

THE HOME DEPOT shows no sign of giving up their #1 standing with 50,447 spots last week nationwide. GEICO was #2 with 43,133 spots, while WAL-MART continues to hang tough at #3 with 39,445 ads. SAFELITE AUTOGLASS was #4 with 38,085 spots and MCDONALD’S was #5 with 25,071 spots.

Posted: June 27, 2011

Subaru is the automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI). Fuji Heavy Industries is currently in a partial partnership with Toyota Motor Corporation, which owns 16.5% of FHI.

Subaru is internationally known for their use of the boxer engine popularized in cars by the Volkswagen Beetle and Porsche 911, in most of their vehicles above 1500cc. They also domestically pioneered the use of the all-wheel drive (AWD) drivetrain, first introduced in 1972, that became standard equipment for mid-size and smaller cars in most international markets. They also offer many turbocharged versions of their passenger cars, such as the Impreza WRX.

Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster, which in turn inspires the Subaru logo and alludes to the six companies that merged to create FHI.

FHI started out as The Aircraft Research Laboratory in 1917 headed by Chikuhei Nakajima. In 1932, the company was reorganized as Nakajima Aircraft Company, Ltd and became the primary manufacturer of aircraft for Japan during World War II. At the end of the Second World War Nakajima Aircraft was again reorganized, this time as Fuji Sangyo Co, Ltd.

In 1946, the company created the Fuji Rabbit motor scooter with spare aircraft parts from the war. In 1950, Fuji Sangyo was divided into 12 smaller corporations due to the Japanese Government's anti-zaibatsu (anti- conglomerate or cartel) legislation. But between 1953–1955, four of these corporations and a newly formed corporation Fuji Kogyo, a scooter manufacturer; coachbuilders Fuji Jidosha; engine manufacturers Omiya Fuji Kogyo; chassis builders Utsunomiya Sharyo and the Tokyo Fuji Dangyo trading company decided to merge together to form the Fuji Heavy Industries known today.

Kenji Kita, the CEO of Fuji Heavy Industries at the time, wanted the new company to be involved in car manufacturing and soon began plans for building a car with the development code-name P-1. Mr. Kita canvassed the company for suggestions about naming the P1, but none of the proposals were appealing enough. In the end, he gave the car a Japanese name that he had "been cherishing in his heart": Subaru.

The first Subaru car was named the Subaru 1500. Only twenty P1s were manufactured due to multiple supply issues. From 1954 to 2008, the company designed and manufactured dozens of vehicles including the 1500 (1954), the tiny air-cooled 360 (1958), the Sambar (1961), the 1000 (which saw the introduction of the Subaru boxer engine in 1965), R-2 (1969), Rex and Leone (1971), BRAT (1978), Alcyone (1985), Legacy (1989), Impreza (1993), Forester (1997), Tribeca (2005), and the latest Exiga (2008).

On October 5, 2005 Toyota Motor Corporation purchased 8.7% of FHI shares from General Motors who had owned 20.1% of FHI since 1999. GM later divested its remaining 11.4% stake. After the purchase, Toyota announced a contract with Subaru on March 13, 2006 to use the underutilized Subaru manufacturing facility in Lafayette, Indiana, hire up to 1,000 workers and use the factory to make the Camry beginning in 2007.

Subaru of America was established in 1968 in Philadelphia by Malcolm Bricklin and associates. In 1986 Fuji Heavy Industries acquired full ownership of the American company .

FHI claims revenues of $17.65 billion with net income around $204 million. They have 15,000 employees.

Cable seems to be where Subaru feels most comfortable with 325,271 spots being run in the last 12 months representing more than 71% of all the ads from the three media. August, of last year, was the peak with 37.066 spots.

On the Radio, Subaru seems to be using a surge, then relax strategy. They ran 66,383 spots in the last 12 months, with high points of August (10,412), December (9,503) and last March (9,655).

On TV, Subaru ran 64,387 ads in the last 12 months with December being the hottest with 8,392 spots.

POSTED: June 27, 2011

Starbucks Corporation is an international coffee and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks has 17,009 stores in 50 countries, including 11,000 in the United States, nearly 1,000 in Canada and more than 700 in the United Kingdom. Starbucks sells drip brewed coffee, espresso-based hot drinks, other hot and cold drinks, snacks, and items such as mugs and coffee beans.

Starbucks started in Seattle, Washington, in 1971 by three partners: English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegel, and writer Gordon Bowker. The three were inspired by Alfred Peet, from the Netherlands, who had a coffee company in Europe.

The name is taken from Moby-Dick; after Pequod was rejected by one of the co-founders, the company was named for the first mate on the Pequod, Starbuck.

In April 2003, Starbucks completed the purchase of Seattle's Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia from AFC Enterprises, bringing the total number of Starbucks-operated locations worldwide in 2003 to more than 6,400. In September 2006, rival Diedrich Coffee announced that it would sell most of its company-owned retail stores to Starbucks.

In a corporate publicity stunt/marketing strategy, Starbucks closed 7,100 stores nationwide for three hours, February 2008, to retrain about 135,000 in-store employees and local management. This got Starbucks lots of publicity, but could not stem the tough economic environment of those personal cut-backs of consumers.

According to company records, Starbucks had revenues of $10.71 billion in 2010 with a net income of $945.6 million. They have 137,000 employees.

Dunkin' Donuts is an international donut and coffee retailer founded in 1951 in Quincy, Massachusetts by William Rosenberg. It is now headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts.

Dunkin' Donuts has 9,760 stores in 31 countries, including 6,772 Dunkin' Donuts throughout the USA. Dunkin' Donuts sells 52 varieties of donuts and more than a dozen coffee beverages as well as an array of bagels, breakfast sandwiches and other baked goods.

Dunkin' Donuts, along with Baskin-Robbins, is owned by Dunkin' Brands Inc. Dunkin' Brands used to own the Togo's chain, but sold this in late 2007 to a private equity firm. Dunkin' Brands was owned by a French beverage company, Pernod Ricard S.A. after it purchased Allied Domecq.

In December 2005, the Dunkin Brands group was sold to three private equity firms: Bain Capital Partners (founded by Mitt Romney), the Carlyle Group and Thomas H. Lee Partners. Bain and Thomas Lee were involved in taking Clear Channel private.

In 2010, Dunkin' Donuts' global system-wide sales were $6 billion while Baskin-Robbins did $1.6 billion. They have 1,000 corporate employees and the franchisees and licensees employ approximately 260,000 people worldwide.

On Cable, Starbucks ran 31.1% as many ads as Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’ ran 118,195 spots in the last 12 months compared to Starbucks with 36,737 spots. The biggest months for Dunkin’ Donuts were November (19,802) and April (22,040), while Starbucks hit their high in June with 19,414, then never getting above 4,700 in any other month.

On the Radio, Dunkin’ ran with 117,640 spots, while Starbucks ran only 7,868 spots in the last 12 months. Dunkin’ poured on the spots in June with 16,926 and Starbucks biggest month yielded 2,279 in September of last year.

On TV, Starbucks perked up a bit with 13,781 spots, while Dunkin’ Donuts cleared 102,030 spots. Dunkin’s biggest month was last April with 11,139 ads, while Starbucks expresso’d up in June with 3,306 spots.

Posted: June 27, 2011

For The Current Spots: